Archive for June, 2010
What’s The One Thing…
… that you can’t quite bring yourself to dole out the cash for, but always admire from afar? There has to be at least one item that almost brings a tear to your eye because you love it so much, but you just can’t quite reach into your wallet and make it happen. Being the cheap-o that I am, I actually have two.
The first is this amazing $399 capiz chandelier (sold at Furbish Studio):
And the second is this gorgeous scalloped mirror, formerly sold for around $300 by Ballard Designs:
Why do I love them? Let me count the ways.
- They’re both sculptural and textural
- They both have the power to make a room.
- They’re basic things (a mirror and a light) with a not-so-basic design.
- They can both make a room feel big and airy (one by providing light and one by bouncing more of it around).
- They both have that breezy and white beachy-chic thing going on, which always fries my bacon.
- They’d fit right into our house seamlessly, no need to redesign a space around them.
- I just love them both. The heart wants what it wants.
Now it’s your turn. Link to – or just describe – the item(s) that have you weak in the knees… but somehow still aren’t on your buying agenda. Do you have a “one that got away” story? Share and share alike.
First image courtesy of I Suwannee, second image courtesy of HGTV’s 2009 Green Home. Oh and check out The Newlywed Diaries for a smaller and easier-on-the-budget alternative to the capiz light we love. Sadly we’re smitten with the giant 16″ version (which is still a pretty penny on the site she dug up). Sigh.
Two Different Shades Of Green
You already probably know that Sherry and I do our best to make green decisions around Casa Petersik, but we actually approach the whole eco-friendly issue from two different places. Which means that we don’t always see eye to eye on the lengths that we’ll go to be green.
Sherry’s interest in being green comes from a health & safety standpoint. That usually means limiting unnatural chemicals around our house, on our bodies, and in our food whenever possible. She’s the driving force behind things like filtering our water, gradually shifting into organic food, switching plastic tupperware for glass, cooking with Greenware instead of Teflon, and trading our personal care and cleaning products for their more natural alternatives (we use Tom’s of Maine, Dr. Bronner’s, and Mrs. Meyer’s to name a few).
I, on the other hand, come from a place of energy and waste conservation with my green ideas. Perhaps because my dad, a retiree from the U.S. Department of Energy, has been a big influence on me (which is why an elementary school project of mine featured solar panels and a family vacation once included a stop at a wind farm). So beyond being the nag about turning off lights when we leave a room or turning off the water while brushing, I’m also the reason that we have a rain barrel, a compost bin, and a dual-flush toilet here at Casa Petersik.
Of course neither approach is more or less valid than the other, because we both agree that each has merit (and together they have some pretty nice overlap). But it does cause some sticking points here and there. For instance, despite Sherry’s warnings, I’ve yet to go cold turkey on the “refuse those BPA-laced register receipts” tip because I just find myself being awkward with checkout people. And I’m awkward enough as it is. So after a bit of debate (and many promises of hand-washing on my end), she decided to go easy on me for this one. Gotta love my flexible and understanding lady-wife.
And if it were up to me, we’d have two more rain barrels in the front of our house too. But when Sherry delicately pointed out that the neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate that aesthetic (and neither would she) I conceded that we didn’t need to line the entire perimeter of our home with giant plastic rain-catchers. If I lived in a dream world we’d also bike more of our errands – but alas, our narrow roads don’t make this very safe (or even very possible) so I’m glad Sherry tamed my inner risk taker on this one.
Clearly, being green around here involves a fair amount of compromise. Just like all aspects of marriage now that I think about it. The bottom line: I respect her reasoning, she respects mine, and we both do our best to be supportive of the other. So even if it’s not a decision that we’d make for ourselves, we’re happy to put in the effort for our other half if it makes them happy. For example, I’ve been willing to use natural deodorant, as long as Sherry’s been willing to put up with me smelling a bit less fresh after working in the yard. And she’s willing to walk our food scraps out to the compost bin even though the garbage can in the kitchen is a few hundred feet closer- just because composting puts a smile on my face. In the end we figure we’re better off having two sometimes-opposing viewpoints because it actually helps us to embrace more green practices in total. We like to think of it as some sort of wide-range eco approach – you know, like a venn diagram with two overlapping circles.
But enough about us. What goes on in your household? Does one of you push the green envelope more than the other? Or for differing reasons? Tell us all about it. And if you want to witness another couple coming to terms with being green together, we recommend a documentary that we watched called No Impact Man. Let’s just say it raises the be-green bar (and involves a husband telling his wife that she can’t use toilet paper). I don’t think Sherry and I are there yet…
Dr. Bronner’s image from here, receipt image from here, and No Impact Man image from here.
Reader Redesign: Brick Be Gone
Jolie is a woman after our own heart. Just check out how she too took a dark office / laundry room and lightened things up with a bit of paint on those red brick walls. Here’s her letter:
Your den transformation was such an amazing inspiration to me that I decided to paint my brick walls, too. It’s my laundry room with an office over to the side. Before the makeover, this room used to feel dark and gloomy and it just didn’t flow with the rest of the house.
So I painted the walls a light color and it transformed the room! It doesn’t feel gloomy anymore- as a matter of fact it’s one of my favorite spaces in the house now. It actually makes me want to do the laundry! And it was very easy and inexpensive. Here’s what I did:
- Painted the walls Sherwin Williams Antique White
- Painted the built in cabinets Olympic Light Sage
- Picked up bamboo shades from Lowe’s
- Hung white curtains from Ikea
- Hung sea coral art on the wall from your shop (love it!)
- Made a burlap cabinet curtain from fabric.com
I hope you enjoy the before and after pictures. And thank you for all the wonderful work you put into your blog. It’s truly inspirational. – Jolie
Of course we love the touches that Jolie borrowed from our own den makeover, but we’re even more excited about those painted built-in cabinets. What a charming dash of color they bring to the room! Thanks for sharing your makeover, Jolie. And if you guys want to see more pictures of Jolie’s recently purchased and already transformed brick ranch, hit up her blog to check ‘em out. Talk about style to spare.
Office Progress: File This Under “S” For Storage
What’s one thing that every office needs? Bingo – a lava lamp.
Ok, I kid, I kid. What I meant to say was “file storage.” And ours is no exception. We made a nice leap forward on the storage front with our hacked Ikea bookcase, but the desk I built was seriously lacking any place to stash papers and such. So after failing to find a perfectly sized file cabinet at our local thrift stores, we spotted a pair of simple embossed gray file boxes at Target (for just $14.99 a pop) that had our names written all over them.
Here they are sitting on the floor of our very much a work-in-progress office a few days ago.
I’ll give you a close-up of ‘em later in the post, but basically they were just about the perfect amount of hanging file storage for us (you know, the kind of boxes that have those rails that hold folders that you can use to label and categorize your papers?). Plus, with two of them side by side they were the beginnings of a perfect spot to stack the white Ikea storage boxes from Sherry’s old office that contain our receipts and our modem (we paid Comcast $28 to move our modem into the office so we’d have the strongest wireless signal in there).
But… it wasn’t the prettiest setup. And having to lift the white storage boxes every time we wanted to access the file boxes was a quick way to ensure that we’d never actually use said file boxes. So with my carpentry mojo still in full force, I decided to tackle another building project. And this time I wanted to create something to optimize our storage and file box sitch.
Once again I opted to rely on the Kreg Jig (can you tell I’m addicted?) to connect all the pieces. The pieces in this case being two $10 pine boards intended to be stairs (I bought them because I liked the finished-looking rounded edge). I’ll spare you all of the construction details this time around (just trust me that it was actually quite similar to my desk and shelf building projects). About three hours later, I had this little guy:
He was perfectly sized to fit the two file boxes snugly in the bottom opening while the two stacked Ikea storage boxes could be slipped in and out of the cubby above them (with plenty of room for the modem cords in one of those white Ikea storage boxes to feed out the back). We even left some room on top for a few miscellaneous items like our external hard drive and the radio that we like to listen to from time to time.
We brought it in unfinished because (1) I wanted to make sure I had measured everything correctly and (2) we weren’t quite sure whether we wanted to paint it white to match the desk or stain it dark to match the chairs (which are free leftovers from our existing dining set, since we substituted two of them for a bench a while back).
And once we had it in place… well, we actually decided to toss out both of those ideas. Instead, we opted to paint it the same soft aqua that we used on the back of the bookcase (Mythic’s Adanna Aire). Just for fun.
You’re probably noticing something else in that pic, sitting on the desk itself. It’s another little file system that we also picked up at Target. It’s actually intended to be used as storage for scrapbooking, but we liked that its shelves were a great size for our notebooks, bills to pay, and even the books that we’re currently reading. Plus, because it’s deep enough to store those big scrapbook sheets it creates a nice wide surface on top for us to place other items that we like to have on hand. Stay tuned for those accessorizing details in the coming weeks (for now we’re tackling the big things like larger storage, toy corralling, art, etc).
But back to the action under the desk. I promised close-ups of the file storage boxes so here’s a pic illustrating that we achieved our goal of making it easy to slide the boxes out and actually access our files. Then we can either pop open the top compartment which will be good for storing cables, cords, scissors, stamps and more (it stays closed thanks to a magnetic strip)…
…or flip the whole thing open to access our hanging files like insurance info and hospital bills (sigh).
And the subtle overlapping circles detail on the outside (and bolder version inside) is a nice touch – especially for the $14.99 price tag.
In general it’s a pretty simple update, but it’s already making a huge functional difference for us (since we’re using this office on a daily basis even while it’s a work-in-progress). Now we’ve got a place to stash paper and better manage the clutter on the desk. And we like that it’s helping to turn the long two-person desk into two distinct workspaces for me and Sherry.
But the room is by no means finished. In addition to simple things like wrangling our wires and cords, figuring out where to put our printer (and if we’re even keeping our current one), we’ve still got to decide on what the heck we’re gonna put on that big blank wall that we get to stare at all day long. Well, when we’re not staring at Clara.
Oh and in case you’d like to see the new setup in action, here’s how we get things done around here lately:
And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
So that’s the scoop on our end. How about you guys? Have you spotted or created any simple file storage systems lately? Or any other clever, sneaky, or beautiful ways to wrangle all of those papers, bills, mail, etc that tends to pile up? Please do share, because even if we can’t use ‘em in this room, we may just file the ideas away for a rainy day. Pun intended.
Psst- Wanna follow the entire office/guest bedroom/playroom makeover? Click here for the intro post, here to read about the big sleeper sofa hunt, here for the DIY desk play-by-play, here for the homemade light fixture project and right here for our hacked Ikea bookcase.
Fab Freebie: Wrap Star
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries***
Ever taken a photo that quickly becomes your favorite but you just can’t figure out how to do it justice when displaying it? Well this week’s prize is here to solve that very dilemma. The folks at Canvas on Demand are gonna turn one lucky winner’s favorite picture into an artful 16″ x 20″ display to cure any persistent case of blank-wall-itis that you’ve got going on.
Canvas on Demand will take your fav family portrait, vacation photo, vintage print or nature photo and blow it up on canvas, then gallery wrap it seamlessly around a thick 1-1/2″ edge to give it that museum quality feel. This not only shows off your photography brilliantly, but it also brings some dimension and interest to your walls. We call that a win-win.
So here’s the full scoop on this wrap-tastic prize (oh and stay tuned for a similarly wrap-tastic discount on Thursday):
- PRIZE: A 16″ x 20″ Thick Gallery Wrapped Canvas from Canvas On Demand
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “WRAP THIS!” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … tell us about your favorite self-snapped photo, especially if it’s the one you might blow up if you’re this week’s lucky winner. And feel free to post a link if you’ve got your fav photo uploaded somewhere for all to see.
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, June 23rd at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: The 50 United States
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday. Good luck!
***BONUS GIVEAWAY FOR LOCALS: Just head over to our Facebook page to get in on the fun!
Find more freebie info on our Giveaway FAQs page. Pics courtesy of Canvas on Demand.
